Why you shouldn’t underestimate your poorly paid barista
t’s one thing to say jobs growth will come from the service sector, now that mining has carked it, but you can’t fire an economy from a base of poorly paid baristas or aged care workers.
While we need to continue to train people who can tell machines what to do, it’s important to continue training people to do what machines can’t, like provide quality service with a smile.
Or can you?
When I put it to Saul Eslake that Queensland needed a better-educated populace with a capacity to innovate, the leading economist cautioned me against underestimating low-skilled labour.
“Far too many people are too inclined to turn their noses up at services’ jobs, deriding them as flipping hamburgers and taking in other people’s washing,” Eslake said following his presentation at the Queensland Jobs Growth Summit in Brisbane this week.
“There is a pervading view, both conservative and Labor, that it is inherently more noble to make things you can drop on your foot than provide services.
“We need those low-skilled jobs, people who in decades gone by screwed nuts on Holdens and sewed buttons on shirts.”
Yes, of course, but don’t we need high-level thinkers if Queensland is to compete in a global marketplace where the dominant currency is knowledge?
It turns out that we need both.
However, Queensland is not yet in the best position to deliver.
Deputy Premier Jackie Trad admitted on Tuesday that the government needed to do more to boost employment.
There has been modest jobs growth in the state’s south east, but when the mining slump cost another 28,000 full-time positions in regional Queensland last month, and one in three young people outside the big smoke of Brisbane is unemployed, something’s wrong.
Have we left our run too late? I’d like to think not, but we must act swiftly to harness opportunities in four key pillars — health, education, professional services and accommodation and food services (closely aligned with tourism).
According to The Australia Institute’s Jobs Growth in Queensland report released this month, four in five jobs will be in these service industries.
This means highly skilled professionals as well — teachers, nurses, university lecturers, lab technicians — with the key words being “highly skilled”.
In the sunshine state we work longer than other Australians, as Eslake has pointed out, but we have lower productivity and lower average wages, partly because our educational outcomes are not up to scratch.
Prospective employees tend to turn their noses up at working in the service industry, a snobbery that has to change. (Pic: iStock)
They’re not as bad as in Tasmania, if that’s any consolation, but if we are to achieve wage parity with other eastern states and indeed compete on the world stage, then we need a smarter, more productive and well-equipped workforce.
Stripping it back, this requires quality education that begins in early childhood and continues throughout a person’s working life.
We need more of the best teachers and fewer of the fallbacks who couldn’t get into their preferred tertiary course. Teaching must be better valued and remunerated.
Children must be actively encouraged to complete Year 12 and to take STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects and do better in them.
Dr Geoff Garrett, Queensland Chief Scientist, argues that the retention and performance of students in STEM education is critical to the future of young people and Australia’s economy.
While 90 per cent of Year 12 students studied science in the early 90s, by 2011 this number had fallen to less than half. It is still dismally low.
Enrolment in STEM courses at university is dropping too, with Queensland well below the national average.
One side-effect of this is that more than 80 per cent of primary school teachers have no tertiary education in science, Garrett says.
No wonder kids are disengaged if teachers can’t grasp or explain concepts.
All of this derails the development of a skilled workforce.
Universities aren’t the only or necessarily best-suited option for school leavers, so TAFES, apprenticeship schemes and workplace training also must get on board with real-world demands.
Stephen Tait, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland, is alarmed at how many of the state’s 406,000 small businesses (which employ the bulk of workers) are not digitally savvy.
Many don’t have online banking or even a website presence and are not attracting the right people to take their operations forward.
There is a massive divide between rural, regional and metropolitan employment opportunities. This must close.
The challenge is to properly understand the shifting labour market and for governments and industry leaders to equip people with the skills and pathways to succeed.
Making great coffee is a skill — just ask anyone who’s suffered a bad cup — but as economist Jim Minifie, from the Grattan Institute, says we need “old fashioned individual genius too”.
In this automated era, we need to train people who can tell machines what to do but, equally, train people to do what machines can’t — coaching, caring and creating strong communities.
The ultimate service producers — now that’s a goal for a truly smart state. Come on Queensland, we can do this.
Kylie Lang is an associate editor at The Courier-Mail.